Ratings recap and NFL soundbites on Texans, Suh and Tebow

The Texans’ Perils of Pauline act was a big hit with viewers Sunday, producing a 25.3 Nielsen rating and 48 share for the Houston-Jacksonville game on KHOU (Channel 11).

On the college front, the Texas-Texas A&M game produced a 7.9 rating on ESPN in Houston. The game rated 7.3 in Dallas-Fort Worth, 11.6 in San Antonio and 19.6 in Austin. Local ratings for other games of area interest on FSN Houston were 0.2 for Rice-SMU, 1.4 for Texas-Tech Baylor and 3.2 for Houston-Tulsa.

On the soundbite front, the Texans made it into the Bob Costas/Al Michaels/Cris Collinsworth chat segment at the top of NBC’s Football Night in America. “No matter who is playing the quarterback position, with the way that they can play defense, and the way that they can run the football with Arian Foster, Ben Tate and those guys, eventually you are going to come down and have to play one-on-one coverage against Andre Johnson,” Collinsworth said. “Bob, I’ve seen your throw, and if they put you in there, occasionally, if you threw it up, Andre Johnson would make a play or two.”

On NFL Network, Deion Sanders says the Texans should go with a veteran signal-caller, not rookie T.J. Yates. “When you have (Arian) Foster and (Ben) Tate, Andre Johnson, Owen Daniels and some of these guys, it really doesn’t take a lot to quarterback this team. I like Jeff Garcia. I like that move – he’s a savvy veteran, he knows this offense, he knows this system. I think he can pay dividends for this team and get them to where they need to go.”

Elsewhere, the major topics of discussion were, big surprise, Ndamukong Suh of the Lions and Tim Tebow of the Broncos.

CBS’ Shannon Sharpe on Suh: “I would have felt a lot better by his comments had he said what he said on his Facebook page on Thursday. I’d also feel better about it if he apologized to the guy that he committed the offense against. Apologize to your teammates. Apologize to this organization. I don’t think he’s learned his lesson. I think what happened, somebody got in his ear and said, ‘Look, you sounded ridiculous saying what you said, you need to make an apology.’ But you do that publicly. Everybody doesn’t have a link to your Facebook page. Do it publicly.”

CBS’ Boomer Esiason on Suh: “I said on Thursday I thought he’d get a two‑game suspension, but looking back at his history and watching some of these plays that he’s been through…I look at this as a habitual offender who has a serious intent to injure another football player. I think if you’re Roger Goodell, two games are not enough in my estimation. I would suspend him for at least four games. His actions are deplorable, and I think we all feel that way.”

Later, Esiason added: “There are coaches who taught to go beyond the rules and to try and hurt people. I’ve seen those and been part of those hits many times. There are a few guys like Reggie White, and even Bruce Smith, who I took a late hit from, that play within the rules. They play hard and hit you hard. I get all of that. But there have been other players like Ndamukong Suh that go over the line. There is a clear intent to injure. That’s why he needs to be suspended.”

CBS’ Bill Cowher on Suh: “Anything after the whistle to me is wrong. It crosses the line. And in between the whistles, if you’re hitting, you’re trying to intimidate and impose your will, as long as your intent is not to injure. Sometimes you want to hurt someone – you want them to feel it. But you don’t want to injure anybody. So to me it’s very clear.”

Fox’s Howie Long on Suh: “Suh’s comments after Thursday’s incident, which I believe were almost as damaging as his actions on the field, left all of us scratching our heads wondering who he is. To me, he’s a bit of an enigma. On the one hand he seems to be a really good guy. On the other hand, he appears to be either incapable of understanding the consequences of his actions or he believes he is above the rules that are applied to everyone else. At a very young point in his career, he’s at a crossroads. How he handles himself from this point forward will in many ways dictate what kind of player he is both on the field and off the field.”

Fox’s Michael Strahan on Suh: “You couldn’t pick a worse time to do something like that. It was on Thanksgiving, the only game on TV and you pull something like that. Off the field he seems to be a nice guy. On the field he has a switch but he needs to figure it out quickly. You always have a chance to get a guy back within the rules of the game. If I was his teammate, I’d tell him, ‘you think you had it bad before, you’re going to have it worse now’ because opposing players know they can provoke you. You really need to learn how to control yourself.”

Fox analyst and former NFL VP of officiating Mike Pereira on Suh: “When I was the head of NFL officiating we looked at trends, and trends were repeat offenders. This guy has a rap sheet longer in a year and a half than most guys have in their whole career. He has more fines than Howie Long had in 13 years. I’m starting to think Howie was soft. This guy is beyond being a dirty player. He needs to be suspended for at least two games. You have to send a stronger message than for a typical helmet-to-helmet shot. This is a non-football act and a strong message needs to be sent to a young talented player.”

NFL Network’s Warren Sapp on Suh: “When you’re a defensive lineman and you’re in the trenches where the big boys are, we have to take care of each other. … He must adjust his game and adjust it right now.”

NFL Network’s Kurt Warner on Suh:“The league has continued to say we can’t stand this behavior, but I haven’t heard that from the team up to this point. It seems like one side is saying it’s OK, just keep playing and we kind of appease him, and the other side is saying you can’t do that. I think this organization has to step up and say we will not condone this anymore and then go along with what the league has been saying all along.”

ESPN’s Tom Jackson on Suh: “The sign that it’s out of control for him is that he’s gettin’ ready to miss football games. He hurt his team in a crucial situation on Thanksgiving Day.”

ESPN’s Keyshawn Johnson on Suh: “A lot of times athletes, actors, actresses, when they get out of control, Boom, fellas, they start to play their character… You look at Lindsay Lohan and Mean Girls – I don’t know if you had a chance to see that movie – out of control as a teenage girl, out of control in real life.”

Sharpe on Tebow: “I believe that his head coaches along the way have enabled him to not develop to be a full quarterback. In a quarterback, not only must you be able to run and win football games, but a quarterback in-and-of-itself by nature, you’ve got to throw the football.”

Cowher on Tebow: “I understand Denver. You don’t sacrifice a season to try to develop a player. They’re trying to win games. He’s been winning games with them. The only thing I have, Shannon, is he does not acknowledge himself, his weakness. He’s got great virtues. But I think that’s the thing we’d like him to do. He gets delusional with where he’s going to go distancewise. He’s not going to win a championship running this option and the things he’s doing here. It’s not going to happen. He has to get better. And he may acknowledge your weaknesses. We look at his virtues as being positives.”

Sapp on the Broncos under Tebow: “As a great defender in this league, I’m disgusted to look at the tape. It’s no more than assignment football: if I have dive, I want the dive; if I have the quarterback, I’m going to hit the quarterback.”

NFL Network’s Michael Lombardi on John Elway and Tebow: “(Elway) needs to continue going forward with the sense that he has to find himself a quarterback that can throw the football effectively. Everybody’s job, especially when you’re rebuilding, is not taken for granted. Tim Tebow has won some games, but John Elway must ask himself this question: can we win a Super Bowl with Tim Tebow and this offense the way we are going? He has to build a team that is not just beating the Oakland Raiders, not beating just the San Diego Chargers, but beating the better teams in the National Football League to get to the Super Bowl.”

Deion Sanders on Tebow: “We’re focused on tomorrow and we’re missing today with Tebow. People are saying he can’t go to the playoffs like that – he just won. Last week, he can’t win again like that – he just won. We’re so focused on what he can’t do we’re missing today what he is doing.”

Steve Mariucci of NFL Network on Tebow: “He’s getting better as a passer right before our eyes. This is such a fun story because it’s so unique. We haven’t seen this before. Of all of the option quarterbacks that have come into the league, they move them to receiver, or you play wildcat, or you go play defense. Here is a team that’s playing option football – you’ve got to be kidding me – and the kid is winning games.”

I’m not going to bother adding any ESPN comments on Tebow because that would require me to look at Merril Hoge’ smirking face and that comically big necktie knot he seems to enjoy so much, just so I can hear how he thinks he’s a genius and that Tebow is, in a football sense, an illiterate clodhopper. I rarely say this about TV analysts, but I seriously grow weary of Hoge, regardless of whether he knows what he’s talking about or not.